Understanding How Immersive Virtual Reality Supports Learning and Transfer Across Educational Contexts

Abstract

Virtual Reality (VR) is gaining traction in health professions education as an immersive form of simulation-based learning. While VR applications are often developed for a specific educational setting, their adoption by other institutions may offer opportunities to extend the educational impact of existing developments while reducing the need for repeated development efforts and associated costs. At the same time, such reuse raises important questions about how learning experiences afforded by VR translate to educational contexts with different pedagogical practices and technological infrastructures. This applied educational research project examines the implementation of an immersive VR application developed to support operating room preparation procedures at one institution and its introduction into a second institution with a related yet distinct medical education trajectory. This project is currently a work in progress. Data gathered from this project will offer practical insights into cross-institutional reuse of VR, with particular attention to how (dis)similarities in surface and structural features between VR environments and real-world clinical settings shape knowledge transfer. Overall, this project aims to identify the mechanisms through which VR applications can be effectively reused across educational contexts, informing the design of reusable, scalable, and pedagogically grounded VR-supported training.